Michel del Castillo

Michel del Castillo, in full Michel-Xavier Janicot del Castillo, (born August 2, 1933, Madrid, Spain), Spanish-born novelist writing in French, who became famous at 24 for a short novel, Tanguy (1957; A Child of Our Time). Though written as fiction, it is the story of his experiences as a political refugee and a prisoner in concentration camps, and, like The Diary of Anne Frank, it has the poignancy of a child’s witness to harrowing historical events.

Del Castillo fled Spain for France as a boy in 1939 with the exodus of refugees at the end of the Spanish Civil War. Shortly after, he was sent to Nazi concentration camps with his mother, who was a political radical. Tanguy and Le Colleur d’affiches (1958; The Disinherited) deal with these two traumatic experiences. They show the disarray of a young mind prematurely falling prey to political skepticism and religious doubt, without losing faith in humankind. Both novels reflect his anguish at social injustice and his need for solace in fellowship with others.